The Behaviour of Clocks and Rods in Special and General Relativity

Abstract

While adhering to the formalism of Special and General Relativity, this paper considers the interpretation of clock rates and the rating of clocks in detail. We also pay particular attention to the crucial requirement of reciprocity between inertial frames. Our overriding concern is to bring out a distinction between clocks which run slow (slowly) in the everyday sense and those which record a smaller time interval between specific event pairs - while running at the standard rate. The day by day application of relativistic formalism is not affected, but the underlying physics is changed.